Electrical connectors provide signal connections between electronic devices using electrically-conductive contacts. In some applications, an electrical connector provides a connectable interface between one or more substrates, e.g., printed circuit boards. Such an electrical connector may include a header connector mounted to a first substrate and a complementary receptacle connector mounted to a second substrate. Typically, a first plurality of contacts in the header connector are adapted to mate with a corresponding plurality of contacts in a receptacle connector.
Undesirable electrical signal interference between differential signal pairs of electrical contacts increases as signal density increases, particularly in electrical connectors that are devoid of metallic crosstalk shields. Signal density is important because silicon chips are subject to heat constraints as clock speeds increase. One way to achieve more signal throughput, despite the limitations of silicon-based chips, is to operate several chips and their respective transmission paths in parallel at the same time. This solution requires more backpanel, midplane, and daughter card space allocated to electrical connectors.
Therefore, there is a need for an orthogonal differential signal electrical connector with balanced mating characteristics that occupies a minimum amount of substrate space yet still operates above four Gigabits/sec with six percent or less of worst case, multi-active crosstalk in the absence of metallic crosstalk shields.